My cousin Bruce and his wife Deborah paid a visit to Mary Beth and yours truly recently. They had left their home in Colorado Springs to travel to the lower peninsula of Michigan, where they were both born and raised.

Bruce loves all things “family” and told us they planned to make stops along the journey, to see other cousins, the last aunt and uncle of my mother’s side of the family, and ultimately their siblings, nieces and nephews in Michigan.

“If life was like driving a car, I would be able to see miles and miles of memories — good, bad, things to be proud of, things I’m not proud of, witnessing birth, witnessing death, and all that is between — in my rearview mirror. Not so much, anymore, through the windshield.” Curt Hanson. Read more.

Our son, Eric, and his wife, Jenny, live in the tiny town of Garfield, Washington. They have been married for 11 years. Eric, a poster boy for Scandinavians, is 6 feet 7 inches tall, with blonde hair and pale blue eyes. Jenny, born in Colombia is 5 feet tall, with long black hair and brown eyes that match her cocoa skin. Their family includes four walking and breathing “lures” — two girls and two boys. Bronze-skin, dark hair, broad smiles, mischievous, inquisitive and beautiful — for whom Mary Beth and I happily hop into our car for a road trip. Annually. One thousand three hundred thirty one miles. Nineteen hours and 40 minutes. But who’s counting? Read more.

My old friend Phil was killed in a tragic automobile accident last July. He left behind his wife, Judy, and their son, daughter and grandkids.

He and I first met in kindergarten. Our birthdays were less than two weeks apart. Phil was a town kid, while I lived out in the country, so in our early years we didn’t see one another much outside of school.
Phil was smart, studious, athletically gifted, a bit shy and introverted. He had a wry sense of humor and laughed easily. I played sports, although not well, worked hard enough to make the B honor roll when I needed to (in my teens, the B honor roll was my parents’ standard for getting on their car insurance), and only shut my mouth when changing feet. I guess opposites do attract. Read more.

I will honor those baptisms over the years and sacramental marriages that anchored families

Mary Beth and I had what we call a “whirlwind courtship.” I met her by chance in February (note to readers: I know today that it wasn’t “by chance”), saw her again in April and asked her to a movie (she said “no,” but I talked her into it), proposed to her in June (this time she didn’t say “no”), and wed her in October.

Mind you, during our seven-month courtship MB was still living at home with her parents in Duluth. I was living in Crosby-Ironton. Read more.

When we become warriors for the Lord, our weapons are mercy, kindness, understanding and generosity

Mary Beth and I like to take a regular brisk walk. Our route covers a little more than four miles, during which we greet neighbors in their yards or driving by, sometimes on bikes, or walking like us.

We never tire of the beauty of corn and hay fields, manicured lawns dotted with majestic pines and great oaks, and glimpses of the Mississippi along the way. We have always found it good for our health, a convenient venue for uninterrupted conversation and a great opportunity to breathe in the glory and wonder of God’s creation, especially as seasons change.

Kitten in distress

About three weeks ago, as we headed out of our driveway, we heard a plaintive cry in the woods across from our house. I went in for a closer look and discovered a small orange-colored kitten that sounded as though it needed help, but had no interest in me as I approached it.

After a couple more tries to pick up the poor thing, I suggested we walk first and see if it was still around when we got back home. After arriving again at our driveway — and with no kitten in sight and no mewing that we could hear — MB expressed relief that the kitten may have moved on but said she’d put a little dish of cat food on our deck “just in case.” I think you know where this story is leading.

Mary Beth and I have a cocker spaniel that we’ve loved for many years. Her eyesight is not what it used to be, and we think her hearing is non-existent. Energy and zeal have yielded to long naps. The same goes for our house cat, who is about the age of our dog. They used to amuse us by playfully chasing one another around the house. Now they look like stuffed toys placed awkwardly in front of the fireplace or sprawled in the middle of the living room floor.

The last thing we wanted, especially this close to winter, is a kitten. However, we agreed that the little fellow (just learned the “fellow” part at his first veterinarian appointment) is of God’s creation and therefore worth saving. For that reason, we decided to keep him.

Joining the battle

The story of MB and me and a stray kitten is insignificant. But think about it in light of our current culture. If a kitten is worth saving simply because it is a product of God’s creation, what can we do to help preserve life for God’s most important creatures?

Good stewards, good people of light and life, help protect life at all stages. Help Bishop Kettler lead us in the spiritual battle that rages about us. If you’ve not done so yet (or even if you have), please prayerfully consider a gift to his Annual Appeal, so that the bishop’s ministries and offices will be equipped for the work that must be done.

I’ve become keenly aware — since morphing over the years from Tarzan the Ape Man into a run-of-the-mill chimpanzee — that I am racked with maladies. (OK, for the record, I was never much of a Tarzan, although I remember a time when I could read the pounds on our bathroom scale without interference from an over-achieving belly.)

Maladies include aches and pains in my knees and shoulders for example, fatigue, short-term memory loss and the dreaded “man-itis,” a condition which I share with hundreds of millions of my gender, in which we attempt to solve really big, deeply annoying problems — all of the problems, all of the time, without ever actually solving them.

Our friends Linda and Terry invited Mary Beth and me to supper at their home recently. They also had invited Father Joe Herzing, our pastor. The food was fantastic, conversation was lively and the laughter plentiful. At one point, Father Joe and I were making small talk. “How are things going?” he asked.

“To be honest,” I replied, “I’m struggling a bit. I’ve been fretting over things like attacks on our religious freedom and the way the world seems to be spinning out of control.”

Father Joe just looked at me without comment. He was smiling like the Mona Lisa — more with his eyes than his mouth.

Too big to fret over

After a number of uncomfortable seconds, during which he refused to take his eyes off me and I silently cursed the scourge of “man-itis,” I acknowledged that perhaps something that big didn’t call for fretting.

He didn’t respond, he didn’t blink, still wearing the little smile.

“I suppose I should be lifting those concerns to someone who can actually do something about it,” I offered slowly, with a crooked smile of my own. Father Joe raised an eyebrow. I managed to change the topic.

I know to the depth of my being that God is the creator of everything, everywhere — beyond time, beyond all that we see and don’t see, beyond everything we know and don’t know. I profess Jesus Christ as my savior, and I am convinced that he loves me and every other foolish sinner like me, because his DNA is love. I speak boldly of my absolute trust in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yet I still find myself rushing to take over the jobs of all three, as if things might be handled a bit better via my wisdom and deft touch.

Good stewards, forces and movements that oppose Christian beliefs are indeed striving to impact our religious freedom. But they can’t touch our faith unless we let go of it. I tend to place a lot of blame for the current culture on the mainstream media (TV, movies and music), but it can’t do a thing to us if we simply turn it off.

Plenty of folks in our local and national governments are not shy about striving to remove faith altogether from public discourse. Does that mean it really shouldn’t be there?

I can’t fix any of this stuff. I’m pretty sure you can’t either, but I know someone — and you know someone — who can. Let’s talk to him frequently about the world we live in; and while we’re doing it, let’s see if we can’t sprinkle a little of his DNA around so others can start talking to him, too.

Do I sound crazy saying this? Did you raise your eyebrows when you read it? I mean, why would I blame God for such an insignificant and very earthly problem?

Well, to set things straight from the beginning, I don’t blame God at all — I thank God profusely. Beyond that, what happened was not — and is not — insignificant.

Since moving to our modest home along the shore of the Mississippi River, Mary Beth and I have become early risers. We weren’t always so, but a rather large, east-facing window in our bedroom — through which the beauty of God’s creation pours into our home, our eyes and our hearts every morning — makes it difficult to sleep in.

Every day the Author of Love paints a masterpiece, rich in patterns and colors I can barely describe, and set on an easel less than 80 feet from our pillows. Oh yes, and it’s animated — with a sound track. Birds chide and scold one another as they redecorate an old home or create a new one. Rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks boldly defy MB’s strict rules with regard to flowerbeds, woodpiles, rhubarb and the space beneath our sauna.

Despite rising early, I’ve noticed that the older I get, the longer it takes for me to become fully awake. Therefore, I might spend some time stretching on the floor, perhaps doing a couple of sit-ups and maybe even a push-up or two. This less-than-severe regimen would include trips to and from the coffee pot. Until February, it also included flipping on the TV and staring blank-faced at “Mike & Mike,” a sports talk show on the ESPN network.

Please know that after 30 or 40 minutes of football, baseball and basketball scores, the TV would go black and Mary Beth would join me for daily readings from “The Word Among Us” followed by our daily prayers. But, oh, the hours I’ve wasted over the years with Mike and the other Mike!

On the fateful morning of God’s splendid intervention, I hit the remote but there was no response. I didn’t hear the usual “ping” that heralds the faces and voices to come. I looked at the television screen and then at the receiver and noticed the little red light was not lit. It was dead.

“Mary Beth,” I called, “I think the TV receiver went kaput.” “Really?” she replied. She asked what I would like to do about it. I pondered this a bit before answering her with another question: “What does the satellite service cost per month?” MB tends to the bills. She told me how much it costs. “Cancel it,” I said.

Now, I literally watched three programs with any regularity when the TV was still receiving a signal: the aforementioned Mikes; “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” (a show about restaurants and cooking, hosted by a tubby, tattooed chef who my mother would have labeled, “hyperkinetic”), and “American Restoration” (about a guy in Nevada who, along with some family members and assorted reprobates, restores just about anything under the sun of interest to collectors, such as scooters, old toys, neon signs, tractors, mail boxes, gas tanks, golf carts — the list is endless).

“Are you sure you want to cancel?” she asked. Mary Beth knew I had the doggone thing on a lot of the time, just for background noise. “We’re paying a lot of money for nothing,” I answered. “I can get by without it.” I learned, however, that habits can be hard to break.

For the first couple of weeks I didn’t know what to do with myself in the morning, absent the inanity of the world informing me with great fistfuls of nothing.

But as I got used to the blissful quiet, things changed radically. Mornings became a mini-retreat, with ample time to listen to what God had to say to my heart. Prayer time for MB and me expanded, leading to serious, fruitful discussions about “tomorrow,” as retirement looms for both of us in the not-too-distant future. I feel that I’m closer to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I know for certain that I’m much less “of the world.”

Good stewards, my prayer for you today is that your receiver will go kaput. God bless!

What should I give back to God? What’s the going price, do you suppose, for happiness? Or love? Or forgiveness?

A significant portion of my job is dedicated to stewardship. I have given stewardship talks, provided stewardship materials for parish committees, consulted with new or renewing stewardship committees and even hosted a “Stewardship Day.”

When I ask others what the word “stewardship” means to them, I often hear the three Ts — time, talent and treasure. I get all of that, but how do we discern the process, volume and frequency of meting out our treasure, talent and time?

Years ago when I was working for an hourly wage, I learned that there is a specific reward for a specific amount of time and talent (or, in my case, time and grunt labor). I had co-workers in those days who watched the clock to the second, making sure no one would steal a portion of their 15-minute coffee break or 30-minute lunch. I fell in with the folks who were a bit more laid back than that; but in truth, I learned that time was a huge factor.

Talent is even more difficult to figure out. Everyone is good at something, but no one is good at everything. Who do we tap on the shoulder to teach a faith formation class? Or lead a Bible study? Why do we go to them?

What do we consider a fair share of our treasure? After all, we work hard to earn it. I guess the Bible says to tithe 10 percent, but does it have to be that much? Should we sweat all week just to give money away on Sunday? God must know how important it is to have an evening out once in a while or to drive a newer car.

My story

OK. So in 1952, God plants me in a loving family. Not wealthy by the world’s standards, but caring. I learn by the age of 3 that the oldest brother could use a tune-up, but he turns out OK. (The youngest brother comes to the same conclusion years later, with the middle brother in mind.) The mom is a great cook. (Thank you, God.)

God endows me with modest talents and abilities, allowing me to experience much more in this life than just eating, sleeping and working.

God orchestrates a meeting between me and a young lady who will become the love of my life. Our sacramental marriage is imperfect because we’re human, but still our friendship and love for one another thrive as our marriage approaches 38 years.

God blesses my wife and me with four sons, which I will admit hasn’t always been a cakewalk either; however, the difficulties we’ve experienced in raising a family have brought us closer to Jesus, the cross, each other and our Catholic faith.

God surrounds us with friends that love us. We love them back.

In his mercy, Jesus forgives our transgressions, bad behavior, poor choices and apathy. All we had to do was ask.

God sends us a handful of grandkids to make sure we have something to be joyful about as our joints deteriorate, our memories fade and our physical strength somehow disappears.

Dear readers, please help me answer this question: What should I give back to God? What’s the going price, do you suppose, for happiness? Or love? Or forgiveness? Fifteen or 20 bucks in the usher’s basket? I want to be fair. Maybe an hour or two working for the church. But I’m pretty busy. I don’t want to shortchange God on this; I truly don’t. But, hey, I can’t give it out like candy either.

I read once that I should give it all to God — my whole being, all that I am and will ever be. Could that be right?

Good stewards, as I write this, Holy Week is approaching. We’ll have an opportunity to ponder another gift God gave us, through the mercy of his only Son: freedom.